Prime Finance Real Estate

Senior Manager, Cloud Infrastructure & Cyber Security Operations

Chicago, IL In person Full-time

About Prime Finance

Prime Finance, founded in 2008, is a well-established, diversified commercial real estate credit investment platform with more than $15 billion in assets under management. Prime Finance has two primary lending strategies that structure financing solutions ranging in size from $10 to $200+ million with teams in San Francisco, Chicago, and New York that originate loans and provide capital across the commercial real estate spectrum. In addition to our lending programs, Prime Finance is an active investor in investment grade and below-investment grade CMBS both at original issuance and on the secondary market.

Job Summary

The Senior Manager, Cloud Infrastructure & Cybersecurity Operations is a leadership role reporting directly to the Managing Director of IT at Prime Finance. This position requires a hands-on, solutions-oriented leader who can drive operational excellence across infrastructure, Azure cloud services, cybersecurity, enterprise data platforms, automation, and AI-enabled development environments.

The Senior Manager is responsible for ensuring high availability, performance, and security of IT infrastructure, cloud services, and enterprise data platform environments while advancing Prime’s use of Azure, Microsoft Fabric, Microsoft Defender, Microsoft Purview, cloud-based AI development, automation, and modern DevOps practices. With oversight of infrastructure and security teams, including a dedicated Cybersecurity Analyst, this role plays a critical part in shaping the scalability, efficiency, security, governance, disaster recovery readiness, and resilience of Prime’s IT ecosystem.

This role is responsible for executing Prime's infrastructure and security strategy, ensuring reliable and secure technology operations, and supporting the firm's infrastructure modernization, cybersecurity, and disaster recovery objectives.

Essential Functions

Strategic Leadership & Cross-Functional Collaboration

  • Support the SVP of IT in executing Prime's infrastructure, cloud, and cybersecurity strategy.
  • Contribute to infrastructure, cloud, cybersecurity, and disaster recovery planning efforts and execute initiatives aligned with approved roadmaps. Champion service excellence and operational performance across all IT functions.
  • Communicate operational trends, risks, and recommendations to IT leadership and other key stakeholders.
  • Lead infrastructure modernization initiatives, guiding design, approval, and implementation.
  • Lead implementation of approved Azure cloud modernization initiatives, including secure platform design, cloud operations, and infrastructure improvements.
  • Promotes CI/CD best practices and support effective use of GitHub, Azure DevOps, or similar platforms for source control, deployment pipelines, secure development workflows, and operational collaboration.
  • Advance infrastructure as code practices using Terraform or comparable tooling to improve consistency, repeatability, auditability, and security of cloud and infrastructure deployments.
  • Partner closely with the Data and AI team to support enterprise data platform infrastructure, including Microsoft Fabric environments, data platform operations, security alignment, process reliability, and data governance controls.
  • Ensure adherence to established infrastructure, cloud, and security governance standards and policies.
  • Partner with Head of Support Services, support a strong end-user technology experience across corporate environments, with clear ownership, collaboration, and escalation paths.

People & Process Leadership

  • Lead, develop, and manage infrastructure and security personnel by establishing performance expectations, conducting performance reviews, supporting professional development, and building a culture of accountability, collaboration, and continuous improvement.
  • Define and uphold best practices across incident, change, and problem management.
  • Promote knowledge sharing and training to improve technical readiness and service delivery.
  • Cultivate a culture of continuous improvement and accountability.
  • Provide recommendations regarding staffing, training, and resource needs to support operational objectives.

Operational Excellence

Develop, manage, and monitor infrastructure, cloud, security, telecommunications, licensing, and managed service budgets, ensuring effective allocation of resources and alignment with business priorities.

Manage relationships with infrastructure, cloud, cybersecurity, telecommunications, and managed service providers, ensuring performance, service quality, and cost effectiveness.

Participate in vendor evaluation and selection efforts related to infrastructure, cloud, cybersecurity, and managed services, and provide recommendations regarding contracts, renewals, and technology investments.

Monitor KPIs, SLAs, and system metrics; proactively adjust operations to maintain service reliability.

Own disaster recovery planning, testing, documentation, and continuous improvement to ensure Prime can restore critical systems and data within defined business requirements.

Identify and implement operational automation opportunities, including scripting, AI-assisted workflows, and secure tooling to streamline operations, reduce manual effort, and improve resilience.

Security & Compliance

Provide leadership and alignment to security teams to ensure compliance with internal and external standards.

Oversee response protocols for incidents and vulnerabilities, ensuring effective resolution and communication.

Integrate security best practices across infrastructure, applications, and access controls.

Support the SVP of IT in security governance, risk management, leadership reporting, incident preparedness, and compliance initiatives.

Maintain and enforce cybersecurity policies, standards, controls, and governance frameworks, while providing recommendations for continuous improvement.

Oversee and mentor the dedicated Security Analyst, setting priorities for monitoring, response readiness, vulnerability follow-up, compliance support, and continuous security improvement.

Leverage the Microsoft Defender suite to strengthen endpoint, identity, email, cloud, and threat protection across the Microsoft environment.

Apply Microsoft Purview capabilities to support data governance, retention, sensitivity labeling, data loss prevention, compliance, and information protection requirements.

Partner with the Data & AI team to ensure AI-enabled technologies are implemented in accordance with established security, governance, data protection, and compliance standards.

Bachelor’s degree in Information Technology, Engineering, or a related field required; advanced degree or certifications (e.g., Azure, ITIL, CISSP) preferred.

7+ years of progressive IT experience, including 3+ years leading infrastructure, cloud, cybersecurity, or operations teams.

Experience leading distributed teams in financial services and investment management environments strongly preferred.

Proven ability to coach teams, drive performance, and lead through change in fast-paced environments.

Strong technical foundation in infrastructure architecture, networking, Azure cloud services, enterprise data platforms such as Microsoft Fabric, cloud-based AI development, cybersecurity, and automation.

Strong experience with the Microsoft security and compliance ecosystem, including Microsoft Defender capabilities and Microsoft Purview for data governance, information protection, retention, and compliance controls.

Experience leading security operations, security compliance and risk management activities, disaster recovery planning, incident response readiness, and security analyst activities in a Microsoft-centered environment.

Experience supporting or running GitHub, Azure DevOps, or similar DevOps environments is a plus, including CI/CD pipelines, source control practices, deployment governance, and secure development workflows.

Experience supporting data and AI platform environments, including infrastructure, access controls, platform operations, data governance processes, and collaboration with data engineering or analytics teams.

Experience with Terraform or other infrastructure as code tooling strongly preferred.

Demonstrated ability to use scripting, automation, and AI-enabled tools to improve operational efficiency, reliability, and security.

Financial acumen and experience managing IT budgets, licenses, and cost allocations.

Effective communicator with the ability to present technical and operational updates to leadership and business stakeholders.

Experience supporting 24/7 operational environments, with flexibility for off-hours leadership as needed.

A strong sense of ownership and accountability for delivering reliable, secure, and forward-looking IT solutions.

NOTE: This job description is not intended to contain a comprehensive list of every activity, duty, or responsibility required of the employee. Duties, responsibilities, and activities may change consistent with the purpose of the position, department, and Company objectives.

The expected annual base salary range for this role is $146,000 - $220,000. Actual base salary will be determined by several components, including but not limited to: relevant experience, skills and qualifications, base salary of internal peers, and geographic location. In addition to base salary, this role may be eligible for a discretionary annual bonus and a variety of financial, wellbeing, and health / welfare benefits.

Equal Opportunity Employer

Prime Finance provides equal employment opportunities to all employees and applicants for employment and prohibits discrimination and harassment of any type without regard to race, color, religion, age, sex, national origin, disability status, genetics, protected veteran status, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, or any other characteristic protected by federal, state, or local laws. This policy applies to all terms and conditions of employment, including recruiting, hiring, placement, promotion, termination, layoff, recall, transfer, leaves of absence, compensation, and training.

Job description provided by Prime Finance.
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